Southwest Airlines - announcement coming..

[TomK]

But Hawaiian already flies direct from Honolulu to JFK.

[Chunkster]

Tom is right about the NYC flight situation. The OAK linkup might appeal to some die-hard JetBlue frequent flyers, though. If Hawaiian really wants to go after Southwest, flights or code shares into Dallas Love Field, Houston Hobby, Denver, and Chicago Midway would be more of a threat. Until Southwest starts doing redeyes, they are not going to pull much market share from east of the Rockies, imho.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Hawaiian already flies direct from Honolulu to JFK.

Maybe it’s a way Hawaiian can offer different travel times to JFK?
The article also mentions Oakland to Boston, but Hawaiian also started direct flights from Honolulu to Logan Airport in Boston just last week.

[TomK]

Personally, I see one advantage of a Hawaiian-JetBlue link up, and that's flights to Europe (in my case the UK). JetBlue is introducing flights from the US to Europe (mainly from the East coast I think). However, I don't see much of a Hawaii-Europe customer base and they would have to provide some incredible deals to pull regular flyers away from their favorite air mile scheme.

[TomK]

"Maybe it’s a way Hawaiian can offer different travel times to JFK?"

Possibly, but I have my doubts. The HA direct flights to JFK are red eyes that land in NY early morning, and the article suggests the Oakland-JFK leg of the HA/JetBlue flight is also a red eye, so you would have to leave Honolulu a lot earlier in the day to make that flight. Other than potential cheaper flights, I don't see the advantage. On the other hand, if, like me, you like to break up long-haul flights, then maybe there's something to it, but think I'm in a minority - and usually that's for really long flights like HNL-London.

[macuu222]

Finally!!! $49.00 one way fares Honolulu, Kona and Maui on southwest and Hawaiian has matched those fares. Don't hold your breath though for Hilo. It's still around $100.00


https://www.southwest.com/html/offers/ha...90409.html

[macuu222]

Southwest inter-island service starts tomorrow. It initially is only Honolulu to Maui....but Kona will be added in approximately 3 weeks.


https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/04/2...00f2528ce1

[Chunkster]

Still not even an approximate time frame for Hilo service, although they have said more than once that we are on their radar, so to speak. Although the Boeing 737 Max is not the aircraft used for Hawaii service, the latest article says that its grounding has slowed Hawaii expansion due to the resulting general shortage of usable planes in Southwest's system.

[SBH]

Kim says Southwest coming to Hilo this year.

https://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/201...55e3d22d2d

He said there will be four flights a day between Hilo and Honolulu by the fall plus direct flights from Hilo to the mainland “before the holidays.”

[Chunkster]

While I hope Harry is right, it won't be truly believable until Southwest makes an official announcement. ITO's underutilized facilities are certainly available, that's for sure.

This may eventually prove to be somewhat of a "watch out what you wish for" scenario. Southwest could siphon off enough of United's ITO-LAX traffic to cause them to end service here. The United flight is a redeye, which a lot of people don't like, but it puts passengers into LAX with easy onward connections all over North America. Southwest doesn't currently do redeyes and is likely to dump Hilo passengers into Oakland too late to connect much farther east.

Having said all that, competition is good, and I hope Southwest goes all out for our business.